Currency codes - ISO 4217

What is ISO 4217?

ISO 4217 is the
International Standard for currency codes. The most recent edition is ISO 4217:2015.

The
purpose of ISO 4217:2015 is to establish internationally recognised codes for the representation of
currencies. Currencies can be represented
in the code in two ways: a three-letter alphabetic code and a three-digit numeric code.

Alphabetic
code

The alphabetic code is based on another ISO standard, ISO
3166, which lists the codes for country names. The first two letters of the ISO 4217 three-letter code
are the same as the code for the country name, and where possible the third letter corresponds to the
first letter of the currency name.

For example:

The
US dollar is represented as USD - the US coming from
the ISO 3166 country code and the D for dollar.

The Swiss franc is represented by
CHF - the CH being
the code for Switzerland in the ISO 3166 code and F for franc.

Numeric
code

The three-digit numeric code is useful when currency codes need
to be understood in countries that do not use Latin scripts and for computerised systems. Where possible
the 3 digit numeric code is the same as the numeric country code.

For currencies
having minor units,
ISO 4217:2015 also shows the relationship between the minor unit and the currency itself (i.e. whether
it divides into 100 or 1000).

ISO 4217:2015 also describes historical codes
in List three as well as the codes representing certain funds in List two.

Maintaining
ISO 4217

Periodically, amendments must be made to ISO 4217:2015
and
these are managed by the Secretariat of the Maintenance Agency, in this case the SIX Interbank Clearing
Ltd on behalf of
the Swiss Association for Standardization, SNV.

More details on how to contact
SIX
Interbank Clearing Ltd can be found in the list of Maintenance Agencies.